Blerg

Little Yowly

In honor of Liz Lemon: Blerg! This is Annika’s second day at home sick. If she were really, really, REALLY sick, like, in bed with a dangerously high fever and hardly able to move, then these two days would be anxiety-ridden but sweet, as we did super-sicky things like snuggling in bed and me reading her stories. Instead, she’s only moderately sick, but still has plenty of energy. Yesterday was OK because she got involved in a book, but today—even though I went early to the library and got her another book that she’s been asking for—she was NOT interested in reading whatsoever and wanted, instead, to bake egg custard and come up with an original muffin recipe, although she relented and we made apple-oatmeal muffins from an existing recipe instead. She played with the cats, she pummeled me with a half-full helium balloon left over from New Year’s Eve, she danced and sang, she banged out tuneless songs on the piano, and she seemed to be one giant whirlwind of stuffy, sneezy energy.

I, meanwhile, was quite irritated because all this interfered mightily with my regular schedule of sitting on the couch and moping. At about 4 p.m., when Annika decided to go out on the front porch in the freezing cold to “get some fresh air” and demanded that I come with her, my patience wore out. I did go outside with her for a little bit, but then I came back inside and plopped down on the sofa. Annika, however, saw this as the beginning of another game, and pretended to be a cat yowling to be let in. Danged if I was going to get up off the couch and play kitty-cat when I had some serious lazing to catch up on. So I let her yowl. And yowl. And yowl. And yowl. Finally I yelled up to Simon that I needed to go for a walk, and could he please come downstairs for half an hour while I got out of the house?

Unfortunately, just as he was coming downstairs, he got an important call from a client, and zoomed back upstairs, leaving me with Little Yowly. She eventually let herself in but then yelled at me for being a terrible mother and leaving my poor little girl outside in the cold. I’m pretty sure I laughed, which made her even more mad. (And made ME more mad, too. HOW THE HELL CAN A NINE-YEAR-OLD SO CONSISTENTLY GET MY GOAT?) Anyhow, there was a lot of yelling. Not on my part—I have to say, I kept my cool for once, even though I could feel atoms splitting inside my brain, in the nuclear fission of anger.

Eventually Simon came down and I huffily went for my walk. I was sad and mad and angry during the whole walk, and barely looked up beyond my feet to see the bleak midwinter landscape, which is actually quite pretty if you can appreciate it, which I could not. I walked for 40 minutes and came back to the house feeling even gloomier and more enraged at the unfairness of it all, knowing that absolutely nothing at all in my life is unfair, and that I love my daughter and my husband and they love me and maybe my mom died, but everyone’s mom dies eventually, so what? That’s why God made Season Three of Downton Abbey.

I peeled off my coat and apologized to Simon and told Annika that I could have let her in, I just didn’t want to because I was irritated at having to do things that she wanted to do all day instead of things I wanted to do, and she sweetly nodded her head and said she understood. No, she didn’t really do that because she was playing a video game on my cell phone, but she DID look up and say, “Yes, Mommy,” and then later this evening, while I was giving her a bath, she looked me in the eye and very solemnly said, “I’m really sorry, Mommy,” and by that time we’d had a lovely dinner of tomato soup with mac & cheese and hot buttered toast, so I was feeling all warmly domestic and maternal and her apology just melted my already melty heart.

Still, I REALLY wish she was going to school tomorrow.

Paint, Poop, Barf & Bees

I. Paint

Yesterday, I was at a panicked loose end, waiting for my erstwhile boss to send me the first pages of my 70-hour “rush” editing job – you know, the one I gave up the giant book formatting project for. The one that needs to be done by June 20. The one I ought to have started last Monday. But there were some hold-ups, and the work didn’t come through, and I was just a ball of nervous energy, and what is the best thing to do when you are a ball of nervous energy? Get a can of spray paint and inhale, of course! SHUT UP! I’m talking about the inhalation that occurs strictly as a by-product of actually painting things. I found an A-W-E-S-O-M-E new paint that is specially designed to adhere to plastic, so I repainted our way-old, sun-bleached cheap plastic Adirondack chairs. They are still cheap plastic Adirondack chairs, but now they look like brand-new cheap plastic Adirondack chairs.

Since I was in the SPZ (Spray Paint Zone), I decided to paint a rusty old café table and chairs that I picked up at the Pasadena City College Flea Market another lifetime ago, when I lived in California and did things like go to flea markets and buy entire sets of café tables and chairs. (And now, I must here thank the Back to School Fairy for getting me an emergency can of spray paint on her way home from work, so that I could finish my project, because when I am obsessed with finishing something, boy howdy, LOOK OUT! I will hurt you with my empty can of spray paint if you get in my way. I mean, metaphorically. Or – who knows? – perhaps literally.)

So now we have a WHOLE LOTTA red furniture on our deck. Yup.

Litter box - or Zen garden?

II. Poop

Sebastian promised that he would empty the kitty litter box every day. I wondered, as he was gallantly promising this, whether he would actually do it. But I didn’t want to doubt a promise that was uttered in sincerity, so I said nothing – a tiny part of me hoping against hope that he would make good on his commitment – because, overall, Sebastian is very responsible, and very skilled at the whole commitment thing.

But can you guess who has done most of the poop-emptying? To be fair, Sebastian was a faithful pooper-scooper at first, when the litterbox resided in the dining room/entry way. This is because he was constantly given a visual reminder: BEHOLD! A BOX FULL OF CAT CRAP! But now that the box is hidden discreetly behind the door in the laundry room, the only person who sees/smells the cat crap is ME. ME, ME, ME, ME. I have adorned the laundry room with every sort of air freshener money can buy, and I’m actually surprised the cat even goes in there any more, what with the chemical cloud billowing out the door, but the cat still poops and pees with abandon in there – and I can still smell it. I can’t go more than a couple days without emptying it, just because the smell is overwhelming, and I’d like to be able to do the laundry without vomiting. That’s not too much to ask, is it? IS IT?

Anyhow, I had a pleasant conversation with Sebastian today, in which I reaffirmed my love for him, but pointed out that he hadn’t emptied the cat crap box in a week, and I would much rather he either a) just belly up to the bar, so to speak, and do the job every day, however he has to remind himself, or else b) admit defeat and say he’s not really going to do it and let me take over the cat crap duties. The main thing is, I do not want to think horrible, resentful thoughts about him every time I walk in the laundry room and smell the cat crap.

At which point he said, “Okay,” and smiled sheepishly and walked upstairs and went back to work, BUT STILL DID NOT EMPTY THE LITTERBOX.

!?

When the barf comes out, so does the bowl.

III. Barf

When I went upstairs to bed last night, I checked on Isabella, who sat up in bed and looked distinctly queasy. I had the foresight to grab the blue bowl, and she threw up all of the strawberries and milk she’d eaten after dinner, and then she gave another big heave and threw up all of her dinner, not quite getting all of it into the bowl. By this time she was shivering uncontrollably, which is Isabella’s body’s way of saying “I am about to have a big-ass fever!” so we moved her into our bed, where she did, indeed, have a fever all night long, although I’m grateful to report there was no more vomiting.

This morning, she’s still running a low-grade fever, although she’s drinking plenty of water and she’s eaten a bowl of peaches. She had a burst of energy at about 8 a.m., when she ran – RAN! – around the room dragging a rubber lizard on a string, followed closely by a crazed Taffy. But for the rest of the day she’s been slumped on the couch watching TV. Poor little doodle.

IV. Bees

The problem with Isabella’s barfing/fever thing is that tonight is the big second grade play, in which she plays a bumble bee, and she has a line – A LINE! – and she gets to wear a cute little bee costume and buzz around the stage pollinating flowers and singing cute songs. The second grade has been practicing this play for MONTHS and Isabella has practiced and practiced and practiced her line and practiced and practiced and practiced the songs and she’s been so excited about the play that she was vibrating, much like a bee, and I was worried that she might lift off the floor and fly through the window.

I am actually considering giving her some Tylenol and taking her to the play and hoping for the best. I am just so MAD that we might all be deprived of this VICM (Very Important Childhood Memory) because of a stupid, evil virus. I’m saying horrible, selfish things like “Well, honey, it’s only about an hour – you can stand up for an hour, can’t you?”

Oh, dear. Please – someone hit me over the head with a can of spray paint, and knock some sense into me!

Snow Day, Sick Day

It's a good thing snowflakes are really, really small, 'cuz those pointy bits could hurt someone.

This morning I woke at 5:45, anticipating the call from Cathlakimas School District informing us that all the schools in the district would be closed due to inclement weather. When the call came, at 6 a.m., I picked up immediately, hoping that the ring wouldn’t wake Isabella, who is in the third or fourth day of a cold (depending on how you count).

I pulled on a pair of socks, an extra sweatshirt, and my bathrobe, and went downstairs to put on the kettle and power up the computer. I was going to try to get in a couple hours of work on the Daily Scoop before Isabella came downstairs demanding breakfast – but I think that she sensed the fine layer of snow outside, and awoke early out of sheer excitement.

It did snow overnight, but not very much. It’s a thin, icy layer of snow, sticking close to the earth like a silvery bodice. And it’s turned out to be an extraordinarily beautiful day:  the sun is shining, even if it hasn’t gotten above 40 degrees.

Isabella certainly isn’t any worse today – in fact (and I hesitate to say this, because you know I’m superstitious) she seems a smidge better. She’s not acting like her compliant, “sick” self; on the contrary, she’s refusing to do things and talking back and being generally feisty, although she’s still congested and sneezing.

I fed Isabella a bowl of warm oatmeal, and then got back to work while she settled in to watch some inane cartoons. After a while, she mercifully became bored with TV, and got out some toys – little plastic farm animals and tiny white fences – and played with them in front of the fireplace, singing songs about them and making up stories in which the pigs are mauled by a giant dinosaur named Car Rex. She’s a sweet girl, no?

But as I tapped away at the keyboard and listened to Isabella’s lilting voice, combined with the brilliant snow-light being reflected into our windows, I suddenly felt a deep happiness to be exactly where I was, doing exactly what I was doing, with exactly who I have for a daughter. I often tell Isabella that if I could pick a daughter from all the little girls in the whole world, I would choose her. I say it so often that Isabella might be sick of hearing it, but I keep saying it anyway.

After breakfast, Isabella begged me to go outside for just five minutes, and I relented. We bundled up as tight as we could, and crunched out into the front yard. There was barely enough snow on the ground to scrape up a snowball, and in other places the snow had formed a paper-thin, icy crust, but the sun was so glorious it made us smile. We gingerly stepped around in the driveway, laughing and knocking fine showers of snow off the rhododendrons. As soon as Isabella’s nose started to turn pink, we went back inside, but we both agreed that it was the best five minutes of the season.

The rest of the day we’ve spent playing Scrabble and eating chicken soup and toast with peach jam (Isabella) or ginger-orange marmalade (me). At the moment she’s upstairs in her room because she’s been naughty (repeatedly interrupting Sebastian and I with requests to go to the bookstore, while we were trying to discuss his upcoming ankle surgery – I know I said I’d blog about it, but it’s so horrible I still can’t bring myself to think about it for long periods), but even her naughtiness hasn’t disturbed my joy. I’m actually glad she’s feeling well enough to, you know, annoy the heck out of us.

In the meantime, let it snow! Except for tomorrow, because I need to buy groceries for Thanksgiving. Especially egg nog. All right, who’s bringing the rum?

How Wine Could Save the World

Wine is the answer. Now, what was the question?

On Sunday evening, we decided we were too broke to go down to McMenamin’s on the Columbia for a pint, so we came home instead.  Our plan was to drag our gliding bench out onto the driveway, where we could look down into the valley and soak up the fading rays of October sunshine. We chopped up vegetables and arranged crackers and cheese on a plate. Sebastian grabbed a bottle of cider from the fridge and I poured myself a little (honestly, it was little) glass of white wine. We sat down on the bench and balanced plates on our knees, and enjoyed the sleepy rocking motion of the bench. The sunshine gilded the insides of my half-closed eyes, and I swirled the cool wine around in my mouth.

Isabella wasn’t quite on board with our whole picnic-in-the-driveway thing, because she was distracted by a little girl who was visiting our next door neighbors. Isabella had just drawn hopscotch squares all across our driveway, and invited the other little girl, who was a non-stop talker, over to play.

Sebastian and I tried to be easygoing about it – I mean, it’s a lovely thing that children play together so effortlessly, isn’t it? – but truthfully, we felt a surge of annoyance at the constant racket this other little girl was making, talking so continuously that her words slurred together into mushy verbal porridge. She was interfering with our enjoyment of the peaceful evening, and obstructing our view of the sunset. OK, not exactly obstructing it, but not enhancing it, either.

I felt guilty for wishing that the other girl wasn’t there, but that’s exactly what I wished. And then I felt doubly, even triply, guilty for wishing it, because she was of a different ethnic background than our family, and I knew for that reason that I ought to be even more welcoming to her – to make sure that she knew we didn’t give a damn about her skin color. And we didn’t. But we did give a damn about the talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking…

And then I noticed that she was sniffling, and occasionally coughing. Uh-oh.

“Do you have a cold?” I asked.  She gave a long and practically unintelligible answer, the upshot of which, I think, was “Yes.”

I tried to roll with it. I sat there with a fake smile on my face for as long as I could stand it, imagining Isabella breathing in the other little girl’s germs and then imagining Isabella’s lungs filling with mucus, imagining the coughing and the breathing treatments and the sleepless nights and the crushing anxiety and pneumonia and hospital visits. Sebastian looked meaningfully at me, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. I hung on a little longer, listening to the other girl’s snuffles and seeing droplets of her expelled saliva glinting in the evening sun whenever she spoke, and then I cracked. I abruptly got up, wine glass in one hand and plate of vegetables in the other, and ordered Isabella inside.

I turned back to the other girl, who was still standing in the driveway, looking confused and forlorn. I felt like a piece of shit, and a racist to boot, but protecting Isabella trumps protecting other people’s feelings, and it even trumps my desire to not seem like a bigot. I explained that when Isabella gets a cold, she gets very sick and sometimes has to go to the hospital, and if they played together Isabella could catch her cold.

The little girl looked at me. How could I explain that this had nothing to do with the color of her skin, and everything to do with contagious germs and Isabella’s fragile health (although maybe it also had a little bit to do with the constant talking)?

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I said, and I meant it. Then I went inside.

The moral of this story:  I should have poured myself a bigger glass of wine, because then maybe none of it would have mattered, and I wouldn’t feel like such a poop-head right now.

Worth It

The nice thing about having only one child is that, when you are sick and that child is at school, you can lounge about in bed feeling miserable without anyone needing anything from you, and without neglecting anything (well, except the laundry, dishes, and various writing projects which you are putting off for another day).

But the point is, being sick (for me) involves minimum amounts of guilt. Since I didn’t sleep very well last night – the why isn’t important; some dreadful digestive malfunction, with lingering effects causing me to have to be near a toilet today – I felt just fine asking Sebastian to get Isabella up, dressed, fed, hair and teeth brushed, feet shod and off to school. I felt fine, bundled under the covers, sipping a cup of black tea and reading a good book, while Sebastian and Isabella discussed her desires for breakfast (vanilla-almond cereal, with all the almonds picked out) and the proper way to place the toothbrush in the toothbrush holder (the way Mommy does it, not the way Sebastian does it).

I felt just fine as they drove off to school together, and the sun came over the hills into my bedroom window and the house was quiet and the unfolded clean laundry sat in the dryer and food hardened upon the dirty dishes sitting out on the kitchen counter. I felt just fine when Sebastian came back and sat on the bed next to me, making sympathetic noises and telling me to take it easy, no need to get up. In fact, I felt a tremendous rush of love for Sebastian, and deep gratitude for simply being taken care of, and allowed to have a little break from being the person who takes care of everyone else.

I still feel just fine. I mean, except for the horrible stomach cramps and vomiting.

But it’s worth it.

I Needn’t Have Worried (but I Did Anyway)

I like to cover my bases with the whole worry thing, just to be safe. ‘Cuz if you worry about it, it won’t happen, right? WRONG. But in this case, all my Preventative Worrying ACTUALLY WORKED! Bear with me, here:  After my last post, Isabella got worse – bad cough, temperature, the whole shebang. I hauled out the Albuterol to keep her asthma under control, and I started thinking about IVs. But then, after a feverish, restless night’s sleep, she woke up and felt…better! Her fever broke, her cough lessened, and all of a sudden, she needed THINGS TO DO. She planned (or “planed,” if you will, depending on whether your spelling is at a first-grade level) an elaborate Sick Party:

And if you can read all that, maybe you should be  a teacher.

Anyhow, she’s back at school, and now exposing other kids to her residual germs, and I am at home, feeling somewhat sniffly, but incredibly, incredibly happy that SHE ACTUALLY GOT OVER IT. For other families, this is not a big deal, but for us, it always feels like a tiny, fairy-sized little miracle. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take my miracles in any size they come in.

The Whole Enchilada, with a Side Order of Refried Worry

The enchilada as metaphor. Also delicious in reality.

Isabella is even sicker today than she was yesterday. She woke up coughing early this morning, and I’m trying to just be cool about it so that my anxiety won’t make Isabella feel worse – but as everybody who knows me knows, I cannot “just be cool.” And so I enter into this sort of limbo-land where all the rest of my life, and Isabella’s life, goes into a circular holding pattern as we hover around each other and wait for her to either get better or get worse. The coughing, we both know, is not a good sign.

Today is beautiful and blustery, with alternating cloud-shade and sunshine. We ventured out onto the front porch for just a little while, to sit on the gliding bench. The cool outside air often eases Isabella’s cough, and she’s distracted by birds and bugs and other nature-type goings-on. She eventually got up and messed around with rocks in the driveway while I picked rhubarb and dug three slug-eaten beets out of the ground and plucked a slug-eated tomato off the vine. (Not to worry!  75% of the tomato is JUST FINE!) I even got her to eat some delicious beet greens sauteed with onions, garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little sea salt. She’s the kind of girl who appreciates these things, even when she feels crappy. Just one of the many, many things that make her so lovable, and far superior to every other child ever born in the history of humankind. SERIOUSLY.

Earlier in the day, Isabella even asked to go for a walk, and that made me feel hopeful, but then she said her legs hurt too much and now she’s nestled on the couch under a blanket, watching a movie about flying horses, because really, what’s more comforting than a flying horse?

This is the point at which I stop thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, and the things that I have planned for later this week now become tentative. There’s a constant tightness around my heart, and a faint buzzing in my brain. I try to ignore those sensations and do my regular stuff, but I am seized by a sort of paralysis. Today the beds are unmade and the dishes are undone and I’m still in my pajamas. There’s nothing good to get dressed for. I’m sure this sounds absurd to those of you with generally healthy kids. “It’s just a cold, she’ll be fine!” say The Other Mothers Who Know About These Things and Feel Compelled to Tell You to Buck Up and Not Be Such a Wimp (yes, you know exactly who I’m talking about). But when Isabella is sick, I find it impossible to squelch my darker thoughts. They are like another person who comes to visit, another entity within the family:  Dr. VonWurstfeers. The best I can do is to just let Dr. VonW. sit in a corner and not look at him, like a painted plaster clown in a room with otherwise tasteful decorations.

One good thing:  My new friend Moira has promised to bring me homemade beef brisket enchiladas – oh, the relief of not having to cook!  Food makes everything better. Now, what was I saying about how my skinny jeans seem to have shrunk?

It’s Official

Things that became official today:

1.  My parents are officially here, in Washington, forever. And ever. And ever. And ever. We met them at their hotel, just as they drove into town. We stayed long enough to help them unload, and for Isabella to bounce unchecked on their beds. The dogs were less annoying than I remember them – possibly even nearing the realm of “cute” – but then, they weren’t in my house.

2.  Isabella is officially sick with her first cold of the school year. She lasted two whole weeks, bless her cotton socks, before the nasty little viruses got her.

3.  My skinny jeans are officially too tight, in spite of the fact that I’ve been taking two vigorous walks a day instead of one, and cutting down on things like, uh…let’s see, what have I cut down on? OK. Let’s just say that I’ve been working hard at having less more food.

4.  It’s officially rainy season, and the sunscreen is officially back in the closet. The temperature’s dropped to an autumnal sort of range , I’m wearing a scarf as I type this, and I haven’t had to water the garden in a week. I barely got the tomatoes off the vine before they were demolished by the slugs, which seem to be multiplying in science-fiction-like numbers.

5.  I am officially ambivalent about No. 1 and No. 4, and officially panicked about No. 2 and No. 3.

Now, where are those M&Ms?  Don’t worry – because of No. 3, I will only have 16 instead of 24. That’s moderation, folks.

All’s Well

I really should be showering now instead of writing this, but I haven’t posted for a couple days and I’m having BW tremens – that’s Blog Withdrawal.

Isabella, after two days of feverish confinement to bed, is feeling much better. I was worried, after hearing her sniffle and cough a few times, that we were about to relive the horrible coughing thing of a few months ago – but this morning she is just fine. She got up and got dressed herself, and has been playing Nerf basketball and bothering her fish, Sticker. Sticker is a couple years old and not looking so hot. I warned her that sometimes fish don’t live very long and he might expire while we’re in England, and Isabella seemed unconcerned. She’s apparently not that attached to the fish. I’m not bothered by this. He’s kind of a boring fish, anyway.

My parents will probably come over in a couple hours. Today is Sebastian’s and my 15th anniversary. The plan is that the grandparents will look after Isabella for a couple hours while Sebastian and I go to a chic restaurant and have appetizers and drinks. I have also splashed out and bought a bottle of vodka, made a berry syrup from leftover juice that I drained from strawberries and blueberries while making jam, and I’m going to get some pear nectar and have pear-berry martinis, rimmed with ginger-infused sugar. I feel I deserve it. I haven’t bought hard liquor in three years, mainly because we needed food much more than we needed booze. Today, I need booze more than I need food.

Right now I can actually see well-defined shadows outside, and a bit of blue sky. It’s an unfamiliar sight, but I’m assuming it means the sun is out. How nice that God arranged the sun to shine on our anniversary.

Isabella missed her last two days of school, which makes me unutterably sad. They have a sort of graduation ceremony, where the 5th graders – who are moving on to middle school – stand aside so that the other grades can move up a row, symbolizing their promotion to the next grade. I will not have this memory to revisit in my old age. Instead, I have been given the memory of Isabella and I in bed, playing with her My Little Ponies while a high fever gave her pale skin a reddish glow. But I cannot complain, because – and I think it’s been said before – all’s well that ends well.

WARNING

…this may not be my most entertaining post ever. Mostly it will be whining about how tired I feel, and how crappy it is that Isabella is sick, AGAIN, and home from school. She had a cold a couple weeks ago, but it was so mild that we never kept her home. Not so this time. She woke up several times last night, too uncomfortable to sleep. I tried scrunching into bed next to her, which comforted her enough to allow her to lie down and close her eyes and at least think about sleeping, but I was afraid I’d fall asleep myself and tumble off the bed. (INCREDIBLY LENGTHY PARENTHETICAL EXPLANATION: Isabella’s bed, which we inherited from her great-grandmother, is rather high off the ground. She’s only been sleeping in it since last July, and her first night she fell out of it, a full three feet to the floor. We were awoken by a sickening THUMP-thudda-thudda. I raced into Isabella’s room, and found her on the floor in a tangle of limbs and blankets. The next day we installed safety rails, which can be put up at night, but folded down during the day. This was more for my sake than Isabella’s – without the safety rails, I would lay awake all night, every night, waiting to hear the THUMP. My fragile psyche just can’t take it. Other mothers have laughed at me – they just let their kids fall out of bed a few times until they learn to sleep without flinging themselves off the edge. Well, OK. I am not other mothers. And I sleep soundly at night. Except when I don’t.)

Anyhoo.

Did I mention that I’m tired? Some days are like this. I’m not sick or anything – at least, not yet – but my whole body feels heavy and hard to move. I feel like someone has tied weights onto my fingertips, and around my ankles. I don’t walk so much as haul myself around. On these days I find it hard to understand how I ever accomplish anything on the other days. Isabella, of course, awoke early this morning. I mumbled into the pillow, “Sebastian, I’m so tired, would you please take care of Isabella?” and he is such an outstanding human being that even though he is exhausted and overwhelmed by his current workload, he said, “Sure,” and that’s the last thing I heard for another hour, until I felt Isabella tugging on my arm. Sebastian helped her go potty and put on a clean pair of underwear and gave her water and made her oatmeal for breakfast and watched cartoons with her. I LOVE THAT MAN. And not just for the awesome sex, either. Mainly, I deeply appreciate being married to someone who is often kinder to me than I am to him. I occasionally call him “St. Sebastian,” which makes him roll his eyes and sigh deeply. But he takes it. HE DEALS.

So it’s 10:10 and I am still in my pajamas and bathrobe, with hair and body unwashed. My armpits are sweaty, and I’m sure I stink. Isabella has taken down two decorative swallows which I have hanging in the living room – one wooden, one paper – and is flying them around the couch. They are, I am informed, The Wishing Birds. She asked me what I wished for, and I said I wished for her to get better. She said, “Your wish has been granted,” and then sneezed. She is still sneezing.

The icing on the cake is that I have a migraine. I get them more and more frequently these days – my head seems to throb about half of my waking life. I medicate myself with a combination of Excedrin, Imitrex, and coffee. The problem with migraines is that even when the ache in my head is masked through the marvels of modern pharmacopeia, my body still knows what is going on, and refuses to feel normal. My tummy is a little queasy, and I think I mentioned that I’m TIRED. I just don’t feel . . . right. And this will last – as with all my migraines – at least three days. And I’m figuring that in the next day or two, I will be sharing Isabella’s enterprising virus.

The good news: At least one small section of the sky is blue right now, and we have seen the sun, briefly, twice this morning. At least Isabella’s not coughing (though that might come later). At least I’m married to the kindest man in the world. (THE WHOLE WORLD, I TELL YOU!) At least we paid our rent this month. At least I have enough food to make dinner tonight. At least summer is coming, even if it’s late. At least, at least, at least . . . at least sometimes, “at least” is enough.